Avery the Asshole Baby

I called the baby an asshole today.
 It wasn't my proudest moment.

But I had just gotten the boys down for their nap, and just arranged my comfy down pillow on the couch, and was just about to enjoy a much earned snooze - which is essentially the eye in the category 5 hurricane that is my daily life...and she started crying.

#IHateMyChildren
#NotReally
#ButSortOf

So I sighed the weariest of sighs, dragged myself off the couch as if I had three times the mass of Neptune, childishly stomped into her room, and told her exactly what I thought of her.

Of course, she didn't seem to care, which is nice. And I don't think she'll remember my calling her an asshole, which is doubly nice. But it just goes to show that long-term sleep deprivation will cause even the most well-intentioned of mothers to resort to obscenities and name-calling once in a while.

It has been roughly 300 days since I've enjoyed an uninterrupted nights' sleep. Okay, I've had the occasional night when the planets aligned and The Divine Being, in all his glory, smiled upon us and granted us respite in the form of overnight babysitting. But in general, I haven't slept for more than a few hours in a row since October of last year.
Ten months, people.
Ten long months waking up to the baby crying.
Or the silhouette of Simon standing in our darkened hallway at 3:00 am like something out of a horror movie (and taking every ounce of effort in my body not to instinctively scream in fear and roundhouse kick him in the face as he slowly walks towards me like a devil child).

And speaking of horror movies coming to life...forgetting to close the kids' door (and subsequently not hearing it open in the middle of the night), and feeling the cat brush against my back as I lay sleeping, and going to swat her and feeling fingers instead.

ANEURYSM-INDUCING PANIC

Isaac almost lost his head that night.
And I almost lost my bowels.

(JK, guys, I totally lost my bowels)

But aside from those super fun Exorcist-meets-Children-of-the-Corn moments, nine times out of ten, its Avery the asshole baby who's waking me up.
Because she's hungry.
Or hot.
Or has a poopy diaper.
Or, I dunno, upset about systematic dissolution of the middle class or something.
And sometimes she goes back to sleep and that's it, but sometimes she wakes up every half hour for the entire night until I finally feed her face-hole because GOD FORBID she go four hours without eating.

I thought Simon was bad, because it took him 7 months to sleep through the night (between you and me, he's a bit of an asshole too). And the problem with that is once you get a non-sleeper (aka asshole) child, you hedge your bets and assume that the next child is guaranteed to sleep through the night at 3 weeks because you've earned it.

We humans are a ridiculous and illogical species.

If there was such a thing as Karma, my ex husband would be in jail and married to an inmate named "Big Jim"...which, last I checked, he is not.  And if there was such a thing as God, I'm pretty sure he's too tied up in the most recent round of Israel vs. Palestine Missile Toss to play SandMan to my asshole baby.

So, lacking Karma and the attention of a very busy God who may or may not be out of his depth in the middle east, I'm left to endure my own little white, middle-class, suburban struggle of sleep deprivation.

All I'm saying is, if I have to deal with first-world problems, can I at least get a Keurig up in here?!?

And somewhere out there, there's a jerk-face person (who was probably an asshole baby too) who's saying "But Lily, you wanted children more than anything. You made your bed, NOW LAY IN IT"

And to them, I want to say:
1. Excellent, if not exceedingly cruel, pun. My hat off to you sir. ...and
2. Go pound sand.
It is an honor and a privilege to be a mother and an honor and privilege to complain about my asshole kids. If you gave me the choice right now, as I'm dropping a mixture of espresso and Red Bull into my eye sockets, to go back and not have kids, I would refuse.
They are my light and my life. They are my world.
They just happen, at the moment, to be assholes.

I'm just calling it like I see it.

So I will continue to wake up every night until they all sleep soundly. Partially because it's an honor and privilege to be a mother, but mostly because I'm required by law to see to their needs.

And also, because I'm already preparing a series of blistering one-liners for when they call me, as parents, and complain about how sleep deprived they are because their asshole babies keep waking up.

#Revenge